On the table of the Research and Development department of Bio-UV, Benoit Gillmann, founding president of the company, mimes with his hand the slow and regular passage of his bio-scan, a device of 50 cm wide which scans less than one centimeter the surface to get rid of all germs. The two UV-C lamps thus disinfect all flat and complex surfaces.
“In one week, with our design office, we developed a prototype equipped with two UV lamps, wavelength 254 Nm, which inactivate all bacterial germs and viruses. The certification tests carried out by the Biofac laboratory are perfect, beyond our very expectations and we will begin the second series of specific tests on Covid-19 strains. For this second battery of tests, it is above all a question of regulating the intensity of radiation of the lamps “, continues Benoit Gillman, French pioneer of the use of ultraviolet to purify the water of swimming pools and sea water in the ballasts from merchant marine ships around the world.
“Time savings and environmental progress”
“Our solution allows disinfecting a space without using chemistry. This represents a saving of time and above all an environmental advance. The device is very practical, light and easily transportable. It measures 50 cm by 10 “, continues the founding president of the SME which employs 135 people, notably in Lunel (Hérault). Bio-UV predicted a 60% jump in turnover even before the global health crisis. “The demand is enormous, in hospitals, in catering, in transport, the army and in firefighters,” says one at Bio-UV.
Among the firefighters in the south of France, in particular, we are examining hard all the solutions to disinfect easily and quickly the VASB (vehicle for rescue and assistance to the wounded) and the premises, in particular the centers of call. “Biologically it is a step forward. It remains for us to verify what happens for example in the recesses of a VSAB, if the glow of the lamps can reach these surfaces ”, one notices among the firemen.
Already many requests
If the certification roadmap is respected, the first bio-scans will be marketed at the end of May, while the material requirements will be at their peak at the time of step number 2 of deconfinement. Once multicertified, the devices will be assembled on site at the company’s premises.
And if requests, which have been increasing in number over the past two weeks, turn into order forms, Bio-UV should call on additional employees on fixed-term contracts in the context of the global battle to disinfect all public spaces with ultraviolet light. And private in a second step.
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